(August 27, 2025). There were so many age-appropriate answers Snoop Dogg could’ve given his young grandson recently while the two watched Pixar’s 2022 movie Lightyear. The animated film famously includes a same-sex kiss and a female couple raising a child. So when the boy asked Papa Snoop, “How (did) she have a baby with a woman? She’s a woman?”—a simple fallback would’ve worked.
“Oh, the stork brought it, kiddo. Now let’s enjoy the movie.”
That trusty stork story—the default dodge used for generations when kids asked questions their parents weren’t ready to answer—itself even depicted in cartoons.
Kids today may know more at younger ages than we did, but that only raises the bar for adults to be ready. And Lightyear’s LGBTQ+ themes were no secret when it stirred headlines in 2022. Yet Snoop acted blindsided, choosing not to prepare himself for questions but to perform outrage over a three-year-old film that was the source of heavy fallout during its original release. That’s like a Fox News panelist discovering RuPaul for the first time—in 2025.
Even if his grandson was ready for the “birds and bees,” Snoop had easy options: mention adoption, or—without sex talk—point to science and how families are built in different ways today. In light of his own acceptance of marriage equality more than a decade ago, Snoop could’ve kept the stork mythic and mention that the flighted animal now brings babies to same-sex couples as well. It could’ve been a real teaching moment.
Instead, the self-styled MAGA convert turned to social media and claimed trauma:
“It fucked me up… I’m scared to go to the movies. Y’all throwing me in the middle of shit that I don’t have an answer for… These are kids. We have to show that at this age? They’re going to ask questions. I don’t have the answer.”
Scared? A phobia from a man whose debut album, Doggystyle, flaunted cartoon women crawling nude from doghouses while packs of animated dogs ogled? Did Papa Snoop ever explain that imagery to his grandkids? Or how about the many hip-hop videos that depicted women hugged-up in so-called “freak” mode while men encouraged?
Snoop is no longer the 22-year-old who launched a career on misogyny and violence, or the 35-year-old who declared himself an actual pimp. In fact, a 42-year-old Snoop once went on record to support same-sex marriage, telling the Huffington Post in 2013: “Satisfy yourself accordingly. I have no issues with nobody…you should have the right to do whatever you want to do.”
That was the year rapper Frank Ocean came out. Since then, hip-hop has been forced to reckon with its own homophobia—and even its family ties. Both Jay-Z and 50 Cent revealed that they grew up with lesbian mothers, and Jay-Z’s mom has since married a woman as same-sex marriage has been legal in this country (and many others) for more than a decade.
Which makes it all the more astonishing that Snoop—now 53 and a global brand who’s baked cookies with Martha Stewart—fumbled a child’s honest question and spun it into a panic about grooming.
If anyone failed here, it wasn’t Pixar or its movie Lightyear. It was Papa Snoop—both for not doing his homework on a film already infamous for its content, and for not having the composure to turn a grandson’s curiosity into a teachable moment…not necessarily about storks and babies, but about what was at the root of the kid’s question about how families are created.
Clearly, the stork isn’t really what’s important here. But Snoop’s newfound fear of going to the movies with his grandkids and facing questions says more about him than any cartoon ever could.
—DJRob
DJRob (he/him) is a freelance music blogger from the East Coast who covers R&B, hip-hop, disco, pop, rock and country genres – plus lots of music news and current stuff! You can follow him on Bluesky at @djrobblog.bsky.social, X (formerly Twitter) at @djrobblog, on Facebook or on Meta’s Threads.
You can also register for free here (or select the menu bars above) to receive notifications of future articles.